In a career that spans three decades, three countries and more than 30 states, Leon has managed environmental impact statements for many federal agencies on projects ranging from dams and reservoirs to coal-fired power plants, power lines, flood control projects, road expansions, management of Civil War battlefields, NASA's Kennedy Space Center operations and a proposed uranium mine on a national forest. He also has worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop comprehensive conservation plans at more than 40 national wildlife refuges from the Caribbean to Alaska.

The writer's views are his own.

June 18, 2013

Mass immigration’s biggest booster among America’s muckety-mucks is former Florida governor Jeb Bush. This son of a president and kid brother to another president is a leading contender to become, if not president himself, at least the Republican nominee for president in 2016.

Bush’s gushing, effusive enthusiasm for mass immigration makes Obama’s appear tepid and calculating by comparison. He just can’t get enough of it. When it comes to immigration, the notion of too much of a good thing simply does not register with him.

But Bush doesn’t just love immigrants, he loves immigrants with lots of babies. Why? Because Bush loves an America with a rapidly growing population. People are good, so more people are better. Growth is good, so more growth is better. A perpetual baby boom is best of all. Adding 3 million new Americans a year (our current level of increase) isn’t enough apparently, by Bush's reckoning, for us to achieve our potential and our destiny. The sky’s the limit! Or maybe the stars! Keep stacking those bodies upward until we reach the heavens! [Let's Make a Baby, by David Weigel, Slate, June 17, 2013]

"Immigrants create far more businesses than native-born Americans, over the last 20 years. Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population. Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity."

There you have it. Growthmania encapsulated. More immigrants + larger, loving families = larger population + more business startups + economic prosperity. Forever and ever.

There will be ever more of us and our stuff: ever more buildings, ever more cars, ever more power plants and oil and gas wells (what with all those amazing new discoveries of oil and gas that will last centuries, all thanks to American ingenuity and free enterprise!), ever more stadiums, subdivisions, schools, freeways, sewage treatment plants, and airports. We have the land and resources and technology to grow and prosper forever.

Then there is the offensive and wrongheaded notion that immigrants to America love and nurture their families more than people born here do. That suggests something toxic about this country’s culture – are we that materialistic, greedy, and self-absorbed, Jeb? Are we so bad that only immigrants can rescue us?

Bush is right that immigrants, on average, have higher fertility (more children) than native-born Americans.New arrivals to the United States give birth at a rate of 87.8 per 1,000 people. The rate for U.S. citizens is 58.9 per 1,000.

But contrary to his interpretation, this is all the more reason for reducing legal and illegal immigration. U.S.-born children of immigrants exacerbate immigration’s demographic influence; that is, this causes even more population growth in a nation that is already overpopulated and lives well beyond its ecological carrying capacity.

The liberal media is not generally very fond of Bush, any more than it is of any other conservative politician. One of the few things they do seem to like about Bush is his so-called moderate and compassionate immigration stance.

As if there was anything moderate or rational about perpetual growth in a finite, fraying world. Or compassionate about admitting tens of millions more immigrants when tens of millions of Americans are unemployed.

That Jeb Bush’s immigration immoderation finds favor with reporters, editors, publishers, and broadcasters is a sign of how out of touch with reality – ecological, scientific, and social – these elites and masters of our nation's mainstream media really are.

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Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit membership organization that relies solely on donations. CAPS works to formulate and advance policies and programs designed to stabilize the population of California, the U.S. and the world at levels which will preserve the environment and a good quality of life for all.